Distributed teams: the future of software engineering?

As we enter a post-pandemic business landscape, remote and hybrid working models have indeed become a new normal that isn't going away anytime soon. Although many organisations want employees to maintain some office presence, many are happy to provide increased flexibility and others have gone further. Software development is no different. Indeed, could distributed teams be the future of software development?

If this is the case, then it's pertinent to explore some of the reasons why that may be the case.

There's a developer shortage in many leading markets, which is hampering the transformation initatives that top the 'must do' lists of many of today's tech leaders. They realise that in a fierce seller's market, where top tech companies hoover up the cream of the crop, hiring only locally is no longer viable. Opening up the hiring process to talent worldwide can help them can get the skilled workforce you need to transform. Working with global teams is the first indicator that IT decision makers perhaps see distributed teams as the future of software engineering.

Engineer retention is also a key factor in this battle for talent. As the tech giants can offer impressive renumeration and perk packages, smaller players need to keep pace. One of the way to achieve this is allowing far greater flexibility, including having home-based developers working in a distributed model. And, with engineers in different locations, it can act as a valuable source of market-specific knowledge that can improve an organisation's product offerings. Put simply, if a company is looking to scale into a new market, they're able to tap into the local knowledge of employees who already work from that location.

Depending on organisational requirements, scaling up or down is made easier with a distributed team. Regular hiring is complex with an on-site presence needed for candidates who make it through initial video interviews. With distributed teams , hiring is much more flexible. And there's cost savings if your engineers are working individually from home as a dedicated workspace is no longer needed to be procured. Hopefully some of these points help to elaborate on whether distributed teams are indeed the future of software.

Source:https://www.reddit.com/user/Thescalers/comments/tvviox/distributed_teams_the_future_of_software/